Making Progress, Making Enemies

Okay, maybe "enemies" is too strong of a word but I know I upset at least one person by covering the eyes of the two little boys I just painted. As is my usual M.O., I painted these figures and included their eyes. I find that painting the eyes helps because it enables me get the expressions just right. I also tend to post my work in progress on Facebook and Twitter (I get less people thinking these are just photographs covered in wax by doing this).  Sometimes this causes people to request that I not block out the eyes. Sometimes it's more like begging than requesting. It happened with this painting. Unfortunately for that person, I have to be true to this series, the concept behind this series, and my own artistic desires and cover the eyes. Not everyone may agree with what I am doing but I am the artist and this is my work.

Here is the image without the bars over the eyes. It's a nice enough painting (even though it's still not done) but that's just it. It's a nice painting. There's really nothing special about it for me. Yes, the second boy has some pretty intense eyes, in fact, he looks downright annoyed, but the point of the bar is to make  him anonymous, to make his memory "anyone's" memory. That's hard to do when it's a "recognizable" person.

Here is the image with the bars over the eyes. Some of you may disagree, and that's okay if you do, but this painting is much more interesting. The bars never fail to start a conversation with someone seeing my work for the first time. It turns a nice painting into something more interesting, something with a bit more edge. It may not be what you would do as an artist but I am still happy painting bars over eyes and calling it my art. 

BTW, this painting is still in progress. I think one more day on it should do the trick.